don't be fooled. we actually don't particularly care someone stole our pants. we enjoy the freedom and stares that come with having no pants on, but it's the principle of the matter. our goal here is to inspire you. not to save the world or become a better person, but to kick off your own pants in a fit of joy and begin the gloriousness that can be your life sans pants.

Monday, June 23, 2008

so all my complaining about not working has, of course, come back to bite me in the @$$. they are taking over my life!

not only are the shifts to upwards of 9 hours long, but it goes from either being a whole lot of nothing to a whole lot of madness! and i'm not really complaining about the nothingness because that is certainly better than the madness, but i hate standing around looking like i'm not doing any work because, oh yeah, there isn't any work to be doing. you can only clean the counters so many times, ya know?

i never thought i'd say this...but i actually miss concessions at school! i know! what is going on?!

i guess, of course, it could be a lot worse, and i could be working everyday, which might end up being the case later this week...thank god i took off tuesdays or i might never see the outside of that place again! geez! but, i think i should stop complaining because it will only, once again, end up causing me more problems later..as we know!

i think i'm gonna work on that "The Secret" thing... ya know, where the whole trick to getting everything you want in life is honestly believing it and sending the good vibes out into the universe so they come back to you and you get it, etc. etc.? yeah, i'm gonna try that. especially after i just spent a good half hour man bashing my friend's ex boyfriend and even said something about the defectiveness of the Y-chromosome... yeah... haha.

in lighter news, our dear sara is in colombia with alicia and scott experiencing new people and getting their latin grooves on.. love shouts to them all and we hope they come home safe and soon!!! <3

Sunday, June 22, 2008

1. Sometimes it hails, and when it does, being inside doesn't help you any.

So about four hours after I'd gotten to Alicia's family's apartment, she and Scott and her brother and sister and I went to take Samuel, her brother, to his Taekwon-do lesson. When we first left the airport it was really sunny and hot--a little hotter than normal, apparently, since Bogota is normally cloudy and cooler--but in only a few hours the clouds looked like they sometimes get in Wilmington. But we made it inside before the rain and we were sitting on the second floor on this little balcony that overlooks the place where the kids practice, so we were good. Well, something about the roofs: not all of them, but a lot that I've seen so far, are made of half cylinder shingles, don't know what material, but they're kind of like skylights. You can't see anything through them, but they let a whole lot of light in. Best I can describe it. And so I discovered that they let a good deal more than light in. It started pouring, and I mean really coming down. I was sitting next to her sister, Alejandra, and we both felt it at the same time. It was raining inside a little bit. But then it started hailing. And it started hailing inside, through the roof. It was absolutely amazing. And Alicia and I promptly ran to the door downstairs to watch it.

2. My shampoo bottles explode.

That one's pretty much as good as it sounds. I suppose it's the difference in air pressure. Apparently I'm supposed to squeeze the air out of my bottles before I leave so that way they have room to expand. But I definitely got in the shower, opened up my shampoo, and the whole thing blew up on me.

3. People here don't like clocks.

I don't know if that's completely true, but they must be much less worried about the time than I am. In this whole apartment, there is only one clock, and I only just found it this morning. I never really know what time it is, and it's an interesting thing going on. Although I'm already understanding much more Spanish than I did at first, sometimes I just have no idea what people are saying. So if Alicia's dad and step-mom are talking and I don't know what about, if it's bad, I don't worry, because I just have no idea. My days, too. I've been confused about the days. I know it's Sunday, but only because people have said. And I can just forget about knowing the actual date. And the food schedule is so different here. Lunch is like dinner for us, except they eat it around three. And so three feels like six-ish, and then I expect it to start getting dark several hours before it does, and by the time nine or so rolls around, I'm ready to go to bed. So all that said, I'm very confused about anything to do with time.

The picture is my view from the window at night. See the mountains in the background? I pretty much want to stay here forever. It's been amazing, and with the exception of the guy in customs, the people have been incredibly nice. And I think I need to come back here periodically, if for no other reason but to get my hair cut. I got it cut and styled by this guy called Alonso and my hair has never looked so good in my entire life. I got a picture of it the next day after sleeping on it and it still looks amazing.

And the traffic, oh oh the traffic. It's like a dream come true. If there are two lanes, they might make three. If there's a stop sign, they might stop, or maybe they won't. People here kind of have their own rules about driving and it makes an incredible ride. And I've realized I'm not nearly the crazy driver I thought I was. And speaking of that, I'm leaving today on a fourteen hour bus ride that travels through the rural parts of the country and along the edges of very tall, steep mountains, and I'm totally pumped. It may be dangerous, I realize, and I don't only mean the driving. But I'm really just excited.

So that means I'll be in Santa Marta tomorrow morning, for about ten days, maybe a little less. And I'm not sure if they'll have internet there, but I'm thinking probably not. So if I disappear for that long, that's why, but I'll be sure to make up for it with crazy stories when I return.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

I’ve definitely fallen off the planet in the last week or so, minus my rant about J. K. Rowling (who should not be compared to C. S. Lewis, not ever ever ever). My mom and brother came down to visit me before I, you know, leave the country, so I’ve got plenty of stories about that. And before they came down, I found out that Wilmington has alligators. Real ones, ones that like to cross the busy highway and float past people in a park. And the last few days I’ve just been kind of panicking about the trip, running around packing and avoiding packing and freaking out about things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten and just generally going off the deep end. So, the last two weeks:

I should tell you first that a really good friend of mine from high school is staying in Wilmington for the summer, which I have really enjoyed. In fact, a lot of this summer has felt like old days. All the girls left and it’s just been me and the guys—and I’ll tell you, even though I’m really excited about Colombia, I’m definitely sad I won’t be seeing these people for four weeks. I don’t think I could have had a better summer so far.

So since Tristan has been down, when his girlfriend came down to visit we all decided to go to this park. It was about 109 degrees like it’s been for the past few weeks and all I really wanted to do was jump in the water, and the only reason I didn’t was because near the edges there was green slime so thick I dropped a pinecone on it and it didn’t sink through. Good news. When we were crossing one of the bridges, we stopped to look at a bunch of turtles swimming underneath. About five minutes of that, and this massive alligator, like eight feet long, swam right underneath us. Just floated around down there, the turtles sort of scattering. And the thing is, we could have walked to the end of the bridge right down to the edge of the same water the alligator could have swam to the edge of. And then later, we were walking on a wooden path next to lake—and by next to, I mean we were nearly level with the water—and five feet to our left there went another gator. Just floating by like hey. On the way out of the park we saw a sign that said, yes, there are alligators in this park.

And this past week, I was driving around with my mom and brother in the car and let me just say this: first, people in Wilmington drive like crazy people, so much so that insurance in this city is highest than anywhere else in the state, which sucks. Well. I had just gotten gas and I was driving down this somewhat narrow road when, in front of me on the other side of the road, this huge submarine boat car pulls out, toward me. Now, crazy old lady crappy driver took the turn out of her driveway wide. As in, she pulled into my lane before she turned forty-five degrees back into her own. Had I stopped and let her pass, she would have destroyed the back end of my car. But instead, I had to monster truck off road it between a bunch of mail boxes. Pulled my car all the way off the road—actually, I just kind of drove into the ditch, but it all happened really fast. I only mean that ‘’pulling my car off the road’’ is much safer sounding than the actual Nascar evasive maneuver I had to pull off. And I knew, I knew my whole little car was going to get smashed into, but somehow, by maybe three inches, she missed me. And kept driving, probably into somebody else. But my little car is safe and has not been attacked and I’m still quite happy with it!

So now it’s Colombia. My actual flight is in around nine hours, but we’re leaving here in six. And I can’t believe it at all. Four weeks in South America. Here’s to making it, to learning Spanish, to becoming adopted Colombian. To flying for the first time, to not getting eaten in the rain forest or contracting Yellow Fever. To seeing the Caribbean, and being higher in altitude than I’ve ever been in my life (currently, I live at ten or so feet above sea level). This is for my story about fathers, it’s for language and how if I had my way, I’d say drop me in a country, drop me in another language, let me live there and be immersed in all of it, the people, the words, the life.

I’ll say this: I’m nervous for all kinds of reasons, and even now I don’t quite believe any of it. It’s sort of like you’re growing up, and all the while you’re looking toward the moments where you’ll be living, where you’ll be doing what you wanted to do when you had grown up or got to the point where you could, and that’s the thing. Getting there isn’t something you realize. I’m here. I’m at that point now, the one that’s only existed before in the things I’ve written. I imagine marriage will feel something like this. Suddenly I’ll be standing at the altar and I won’t realize when I got there, when a whole part of my life began. And I’m not sure now when I got halfway through undergrad, when I got to leaving the States for something bigger than the things I’ve done so far. I feel like I’ll wake up sometime later and I’ll have already published and I’ll have children and it just all seems so fast. Not too fast, and I’m not at any of those places yet. I only mean I can’t believe I’m already where I am now, and it’s only quickening, and maybe when you cross over lines in your life you don’t know it, you don’t have time to ask yourself whether you’re ready, it’s only suddenly you’re doing it and when did it ever happen, but you must have been ready because you got put there and you didn’t sink.

This is what that is, I think. I’ve flown past the starting point because it’s all now, happening is now, Colombia and writing and living are now and if all those waited for me to realize I was ready, now would be a perpetual holding, a waiting. But here I am, and next time that will be South America. And who knows after that, only that I began toward there longer ago than I know. So see you guys on the other side of the Caribbean.

Monday, June 16, 2008

i'm being entirely serious here. there is no doubt in my mind that it is going to happen. break out the tarot cards, ouija board, magic eight ball, and crystal ball. all signs are pointing to yes. an important one that should have tipped me off was that my very first celeb infatuation was with jonathon taylor thomas...Jonathon taylor thomas.

don't believe me? let's examine the evidence. here are a list of all the guys i have either liked or thought were attractive throughout the course of my lifetime that all happened to have names that started with a J... coincidence? i think not:

jonathon x2

josh x2

john x2

justin

jared

jensen

julian

joe x4

jason x2

james x2

jake

jordan x2

see what i'm saying here?! that's insane! there might even be more i just can't think of. did you count? that's 12 different names and 21 if you count the repeats!! what is up! the universe is most definitely trying to tell me something.

to be fair, there have been several name frequencies in the nicole list of crushes: 3 erics, 2 ryans, 2 billys, 3 toms, 2 nicks, 2 davids, etc... but still, nothing like the j's!!

maybe i'm crazy... maybe it's nothing... but you remember this when i announce my engagement, just in case...

Sunday, June 8, 2008

let me start off by saying i had absolutely every intention of working this summer, which might come as a huge shock, i know... but i mean it. the impending doom of my credit card statement coming in with an amount due considerably over $500 and just about less than $1000 was looming ahead like a timer on a bomb... tick, tick, tick, BOOM - there goes nicole's credit score and any hope of doing anything else with her summer besides paying off the credit card.

this, of course, had my butt kicked into gear quickly and it was just one day past the week anniversary of me being back in jersey that i headed to the movie theater to start filling out some paperwork, excited to start, but also kinda hoping i wouldn't have to until AFTER indiana jones weekend. well, not only did i miss indy's weekend, and the sex and the city weekend, but here we are, a MONTH later, and have i worked one single day yet? NOPE! and the craziest insane part of all of this is that i actually WANT to work, so, of course, i should have known, that now of all times clearview would choose to be the biggets slackers on the planet and essentially forget they have a completely willing and able worker just dying to get on that schedule! *get ready for sarcasm* good one, universe! so very funny!

it's the universe. i completely and entirely blame the universe. i have, with the exception of college, always avoided working like having a job were the black death and i might as well lick the open wound of a leper during the plague, i openly admit it, sorry that i am the queen of slackers but that is just the way it is. always has been, and probably always will, but i swear to all of you i was honestly trying to change that this summer! you all know it! i posted it a considerable while back and said how much i wanted/need a job... but no! there goes the universe screwing with things again, thinking it's all fun and games, laughing at poor, emphasis on poor, little nicole. ESPECIALLY because it knows i hate nothing more than job hunting so if the theater doesn't call this week (because i won't pander to them by calling myself, AGAIN, since i've had to contact them about everything each stage of the application process as if i were the employer and they were the employee), i'll be forced to go back into search mode. GGRRR!!!!! >:-O

i am thankful for the time i have had thus far with my schedule being freer all thanks to not working and the people i've been able to hang out with and things i've been able to do that might have been hindered by a job. like yesterday, i got to see my first yankee game in like two years at the stadium, which was fabulous and a blast as always, not just because it was an amazing game which we won, but because this is the last season at the current stadium before they move into the new one that is, oh yeah, right across the street. yup, more on that later. anyway, this is my plea to the universe to have clearview wake up and give me some damn hours, because if i end up getting so fed up that i resort to name calling and impolite remakrs, i'm gonna have to go see those remaining 15 movies at the more expensive and less preferred AMC theater by the mall, and i really just dont' want to. bah.

first thing i must say is how excited i am that i can finally post in yellow!! sara knows above anyone else how truly happy this makes me - i kind of have a serious love-of-all-colors problem. :-P

now, in regards to the movies, i've decided that some i don't have to see in the theater and can absolutely wait until they come out on DVD, so between that and the ones i've already seen, the new list looks something like this:

ones i've already seen:

Iron Man

Made of Honor

Indiana Jones

Sex and the City

The Strangers

ones that i would have liked to see in the theater but i missed them and therefore must wait until DVD unless they get shown on campus:

88 minutes

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Baby Mama

Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Speed Racer

What Happens in Vegas

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

ones that i have yet to see:

The Happening

Get Smart

Wanted

Hancock

Hellboy 2

The Dark Knight

Mamma Mia!

Step Brothers

Midnight Meat Train

He's Just Not That Into You

Pineapple Express

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Seventeen Again

Tropic Thunder

House Bunny

ones that i will wait for DVD:

The X-files

The Mummy 3

American Teen

The Accidental Husband

i'd like to think this all makes some sort of difference, after all, i only have 15 left i need to see in the theater! that is nearly half the original list i was trying to tackle, but i've already seen 5, so that means i'll still be seeing a whopping 20 in the theater over the course of 3 months. not too shabby if i do say so myself! not to mention, i've already eaten at least twice my body weight in popcorn, so it probably wouldn't hurt if i weren't at the theater as often as was originally planned.

i hope you all have been filing into theaters near you, as well, and taking complete advantage of this fabulous summer film landscape. see ya'll at the movies!

So apparently JKRowling spoke at Harvard's graduation. Here's the transcript of that. If you feel like you might want to put your head through something solid, feel free. I did.

I'm just gonna say. I absolutely cannot get over how she cannot get over herself. Examples:

"However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure."

That's a little out of context because she does say she has no doubt that many of them have experienced hardship and heartbreak, but that kind of blanket statement is so ignorant I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. The bigger your accomplishment, the more likely you are to have experienced failure--at least that's what I think, but that's blanket statement-y too. Can we just assume that a lot of people have gone through really tough things and that a lot of people haven't? That a particularly prestigious school should make little difference? Well, it wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't followed it with this:

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable."

Are you kidding me? Are you absolutely freaking joking, because you must be that or retarded. Now, don't get me wrong. While I have never been divorced, I have no doubt it is devastating. But statistics tell us that half the people she's addressing will be divorced at least once at some point. And being poor? Being at the poverty level, the official government defined poverty line? I have been there a large part of my life, and while it's not always comfortable and sometimes it really is awful, it's not quite the tragedy she seems to be making of it, not unless it's real poverty, India, Africa, and so many other places.

But that's not even what bothers me the most about that statement. I just can't believe she said it. How astoundingly presumptuous of her. I just--I don't even have words for that. Does she not realize what goes on in the world? Please, someone show her an actual scale of the lives of the people on this planet, Harvard grads included, and designate a place on it for failure and tragedy and then for her, for the privileged place she was in even at rock bottom. Again, I don't say this to take away from anything that anyone has suffered through, and I have no doubt it was a difficult and painful and I certainly wouldn't want to be in the place she was in--but oh man, the whole of Harvard's 2008 graduating class might never fail as badly as she did.

That, and she's still so wrapped up in her cliches I might have just quit reading the speech. She used a light at the end of the tunnel metaphor. Not saying I've never done that ever, just saying that I'm not paid nearly as much as she is and if I were, it'd probably be better spent on me. Or Nicole. Or a fair number of other undergrads. Now, I'm as addicted the the Harry Potter series as a lot of people are. I'll give her that her books are entertaining and that I can't put them down. But this isn't a post about her as a writer, this is a post about how badly she annoys me.

She addressed the graduating class at Harvard, and all she had to say was about herself. It gets better toward the end, and she does acknowledge how lucky she is to live in the country she lives in, etc., but I don't know. Between that and being such a copyright hog (not in the justified way, but in the selfish, I think I'm the greatest [writer] there ever was and therefore my name should be on every last thing even when it means that charity is no longer given to those in need of charity because at one possible date in the indeterminate future I might give money to them in my name because it's all about me my name is JKROWLING JKROWLING!).

Ugh. End rant. JKRowling, please, please. Sometimes you are not someone or something to aspire to, and as most of the writers I emulate are dead, I could use someone worth looking toward. And they're there, for certain, however less broadcast, but if you must be in the spotlight, understand that sometimes light shines toward you because you have the means to point it toward the things we all ought to be seeing. And here I'll say nothing about your light at the end of the tunnel metaphor, except that I think it's a train and I really hope that if this keeps up, one of the two of us is on the other end.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

in case you hadn't noticed, "hey, who stole my pants?" has just gotten some work done in the looks department.

now, it's a little particular about making sure its color scheme matches and has appropriate font sizes, so please send nothing but love and admiration its way until it's more comfortable in its new template. this is a very sensitive time and it just needs a short while to adjust.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Sunday, June 1, 2008

so, remember back in an earlier post when i was talking about how i kinda wanted summer to go a bit faster just because i was so excited for next semester, but that it could still take its time as i was in no real hurry? yeah, well, apparently summer missed that last part and it is has to decided to just fly right on by as usual! terrible! SLOW DOWN!

at the end of this week i'll have already been home a month. that's insane! i still can't even believe last weekend was memorial day. before we know it classes will be back in session and it'll be labor day we're celebrating instead. yuck!

the best part is, i've been doing entirely nothing with my life besides hanging out with my awesome friends and putting a dent in that movie list of mine. which is generally how i like it and have no complaints as far as those two things are concerned, but i must say i am looking forward to the frickin' movie theater getting its act together and finally putting me on the schedule. i did start the applications on may 15, just one week after i was home, so it's clearly not my fault the process takes 12 years. suffice to say, i'm growing bored out of my mind, which i didn't think was possible, with sitting around watching tv all day (when i'm not puppy sitting that is, which has been the only semi-productive thing i do during some days).

speaking of my awesome friends earlier, thursday was an especially amazing example of this as i hung out with one of my oldest and dearest, miss lizzie - who is one of the loves of my life and my always dependable eating partner in crime. after both of us unintentionally, though probably subconsciously, had hardly anything to eat all day, when it came time for dinner at the fabulous trat, we each had bread, a salad, penne vodka, and a slice of pizza. all of which we topped off later that evening with a piece of ice cream cake. i couldn't be prouder of us. (oh, yeah, we finished everything. i know, i know... where do we put it? :-P )

the ice cream cake for lizzie's birthday which was monday was enjoyed while playing mall madness (which loses some of its luster when you realize how incredibly true the prices of some things are and that once you've been using your own credit card and buying these things, it's not as fun as it was when it was just a game and the money was fake - we were both a little depressed after that) and life (where i awesomely made it through as a travel agent with a $90,000 a year salary before lizzie, the pro-athelete, took it from me), because old school board games are the sh*t and you're never too old to play. i won mall madness (the irony not lost on me of how much in reality i really hate malls) and she won life, so it worked out nicely. all in all, we had the time of our life.

i look forward to more summer nights of eating and playing games. that is, after all, what summer is all about, isn't it? as long as summer takes its lovely time and passes by as fast as an old lady fresh outta the nursing home with a bad hip and a walker!

My apartment has been invaded. I don't know what it is, but I'm kind of freaking out a little bit. It started earlier this week. Thankfully, so far we haven't seen in waterbugs, which is normally the kind of bug we see, this being the beach and all. Those things are awful, because they're gigantic and they're so fast it's hard to squish them (when we have boys around to do so, or Alicia since she's the house mommy) and sometimes they fly, which is absolutely panic-inducing.

That said, the bugs that have been getting in are pretty awful. As far as I can tell, they're coming in through the sliding glass door that we leave open while we're hanging out downstairs at night. Since it's about 300 degrees inside and a little cooler outside. Well, the first night we noticed them--they're Japanese beetles, by the way, which is weird on its own--we had everyone over, hanging out and watching a movie (this crazy intense movie called Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon, go watch it if you like gang hit movies--I cried about eleven times in the first few minutes, but it was good for that kind of movie) and I was all curled up in the recliner with a blanket. Well, after most everyone had left, being thoroughly traumatized by the movie, I was just kind of shuffling around the living room with the blanket still wrapped around me when I looked down near where I was holding it and one of those nasty things was attached! At that point I kind of did one of those cat-leaps and slung the blanket across the room and slung myself to the other side.

Well, the next night we had a bunch of people over again for the roommates' going away party, and the front and back door were wide open. We were playing Mario Kart Wii (woo!) and apparently the bugs had gotten in again because they started kamikaze-ing us, dive-bombing our heads and we'd knock them away. After all the Mario Kart, we all piled on the couches to watch (the greatest movie ever) Independence Day, and my leg started itching. Now, keep in mind that I was wearing jeans, and they weren't skin tight, but they certainly weren't baggy. When I went to scratch the spot, there was something small and crunchy-ish between my pants and my leg. And I sort of knew then. It took everything in my not to tear off my pants right there, but I ran upstairs and wiggled out of them, and lo and behold! Japanese beetle in my pants! I still have no idea at all how it got there.

They got in last night too, swooping all around by the ceiling, nasty little kamikaze bugs. But we had another bug come out last night, besides the beetles. I was sitting on the couch, and all of a sudden Scott (my friend/roommate's boyfriend) comes flying over the back of it, man-roars, then absolutely destroys this massive spider that was on the wall beside my head about to bite me and kill me. Totally saved my life! I mean, he smashed that thing with is bare hands.

Actually, that's not exactly the way it happened. Really, there was a giant spider, and really, it almost killed me. But what happened was Scott said, "Sara. Behind you. On the wall. To your right." And again, I sort of knew. So I slowly turned around, saw the thing, and flew off the couch yelling SCOTTKILLIT SCOTTKILLIT SCOTTKILLIT! And he did, and it was terrifying.

And as of now, I've been finding dead Japanese beetles all over the living room and kitchen. And I'm pretty grossed out. But they weren't kidding about being kamikaze beetles.

All right, one last thing. Thanks to Scott for this link. It's an ad some women put in the paper. Yay for accidental sexual innuendos.